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HUNDREDS OF HOUSEHOLDS at a housing estate in Dublin were left without water over Easter after experiencing what one resident said was their seventh outage this year.
Homeowners at Dargle Wood in the Dublin suburb of Knocklyon have experienced dozens of outages since May 2022, according to the resident, as locals believe a new apartment development has put a strain on supply.
A water mains fault happened once again on the morning of Easter Sunday, and homes were left without any water until Tuesday evening despite initial alerts telling households that the outage would last no more than a few hours.
The resident who spoke to The Journal said that she was repeatedly assured by Uisce Éireann, the state’s water provider, that crews were working to address the issue despite her claims that no one arrived to site until Tuesday.
A spokesperson for Uisce Éireann said that the estate in Knocklyon was impacted a a after a water mains pipe burst on Sunday morning and confirmed that a leak detection crew and repair team was not sent to the location until Tuesday.
The estimated restoration time continued to be updated to a later and later date during the outage.
Fianna Fáil TD John Lahart labelled the “shifting deadlines” from the service as “appalling”.
“In both service delivery and public communication, Uisce Éireann has fallen far short,” Lahart said.
“The lack of transparency and responsiveness shown to affected residents and their representatives is deeply troubling.”
Most residents had their water restored on Tuesday night but the homeowner we spoke to said because Uisce Éireann informed those at the estate that the outages would only last for a few hours, most households did not prepare for a prolonged period without water.
Uisce Éireann did not provide a reason why no repair teams were sent until Tuesday or why customers were told that the issue was being actively resolved.
A spokesperson said that some households were impacted by ‘airlocks’ – when air gets trapped in a high point of the system, preventing water flow- and that the service provider deployed plumbers to those homes on Thursday.
The householder we spoke to moved into her home in south-west Dublin in 2021 and she estimates her there has been dozens of water outages since 2022.
Though estimated restoration times are usually very accurate and the longest period that families went without water was 24 hours, she said that continuous outages can be disruptive.
A theory among some residents is that the water supply was impacted after the development of a new apartment block near a number of housing estates in the area.
A spokesperson confirmed that there has been “a number” of outages in the Knocklyon area this year due to old PVC pipes bursting, particularly in cold weather.
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Fair play to him. Nice to see a young man trying to engage with the people. They usually only do this once every 5 years to get elected. And when does being an LGBT activist make you gay. I would also like to see rights for LGBT community and am married with 2 kids. Fair play to him
Question 1: why does a suburban sprawl on the outskirts of a relatively small city require a separate mayor?
Question 2: expenses are bleedin’ deadly right?
Question 3: I’m sorry, and you are?
South Dublin County has the fourth highest population for a council area in the country. Do you believe we deserve less representation for living close to a large city?
To be honest, I think a city of under 1.5m people having four separate mayors & councils is utterly ridiculous. Even if we have to retain the four separate councils, there should be one mayor over them all. There are ways to do this even if not the perfectly logical suggestion for a directly elected mayor which was rejected by Fingal council.
If you look at our national population you really have to wonder about the amount of political representation we currently enjoy. We’re about the size of greater Manchester who have a 12 person council governing them, and then a 2 house national parliament above that, and a queen. We have councils for each county/city (and we define cities in pretty questionable ways), 2 Houses of Parliament and a president, yet when the fat was being trimmed only town councils came in to question. Do we benefit from this excessive representation, or is it a costly hindrance to actually getting things done?
London has a population of 8.3 million. It has 33 local authorities all with their own mayor. It also has a London assembly as well as the office of the Mayor of London. And 4 is too much?
Ask him why he joined SF and how he reconciled his liberal agenda with their kangaroo courts, murder and rape?
Just reply on your Facebook and Twitter. No need to move away from the two
Tumblr is just as good,I’ve lost countless searching throughuser created content, most of it is brilliant,
Tumblr allows you to ask questions anonymously, maybe some people don’t feel comfortable asking publicly via Twitter or Facebook.
Because neither Facebook nor Twitter can be anonymous?
By the way well done Mayor
If he thinks engaging with young people and listening to what people want is the right way for politicians and politics to move forward in this country then he’s in the wrong place altogether. Seems to me that there’s nothing wrong with the “promise earth moon and stars to people to get elected, ignore and deprive systems that need the most help when you do (health, & education for example) then seek out every possible way to impose even more taxes on the mist taxed population in Europe”. Just my opinion tho.
Surprised he doesn’t do a Reddit AMA!
Tom only thing you can do is throw dirt..why not ask him yourself if you are genuinely interested though I fear you would not be willing to listen so closed is your mind
have your say